When the U.S. economy collapsed, millions of us lost our homes, our jobs, our retirement savings and our faith in the American dream. What we gained was a very clear view of the vast -- and growing -- divide between the rich and the rest of us.
During a meeting with historians in 2011, Politico reported, President Obama said: "What you could do for me is to help me find a way to discuss the issue of inequality in our society without being accused of class warfare." For Obama, this is not an esoteric question. Rather, this is a challenge that will be integral to his campaign and, if he is re-elected, to his second term as president.
Newark Mayor Cory Booker and Former Senate Majority leader Dr. Bill Frist on new childhood obesity initiatives.
The statistics are grim: Roughly one in six U.S. children are obese, and, at last count, nearly one in three are overweight, putting them at increased risk of health problems ranging from diabetes to being bullied at school.
There were more than 49 million Americans living in poverty in 2010, under an alternative measure released by the Census Bureau Monday.
Just 12 years after the arrival of the 6 billionth individual on the planet in 1999, humanity will greet the 7 billionth arrival this month. The world population continues its rapid ascent, with roughly 75 million more births than deaths each year. The consequences of a world crowded with 7 billion people are enormous. And unless the world population stabilizes during the 21st century, the consequences for humanity could be grim.
Texas Governor Rick Perry likes to brag that his state is an economic powerhouse.
Move over, Cookie Monster. And pipe down, Oscar the Grouch.
Prime minister Manmohan Singh faces a growing political storm over how to measure poverty in India amid fears that new benchmarks proposed by a powerful policymaking body could see many of the country's poor lose their welfare benefits.
Guess where most people in poverty live? Hint: It's not in the inner cities or rural America.
These are hard times in the United States.
America's poverty rate is now the worst since 1993, according to a shocking report last week from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The U.S. Census Bureau reported this week that more Americans are living in poverty than ever before measured -- 46.2 million people.
Without help from the federal government, millions more people would have sunk below the poverty line in 2010, U.S. Census data shows.
Amid a still struggling economy, more people in America fell below the poverty line last year, according to new census data released Tuesday.
The Wallaces know what it means to struggle.
Poverty rates among children have risen sharply. CNN's Athena Jones talks with one family to see how they're coping.
U2 frontman Bono is usually lauded as one of the world's most vocal anti-poverty campaigners but at Glastonbury Festival on Friday he instead found himself the target of criticism at his band's alleged efforts to avoid paying millions of euros in taxes.
In 2009, rockers U2 performed on a rooftop in London to mark the launch of their album, "No Line on the Horizon".
People around the world are changing their diets because of soaring food prices, according to a new study.
As global food prices rise near record highs, the World Bank warned Thursday that further spikes could push millions more people deeper into poverty.
It's his first trip to South America, one that many doubted would happen at all.
Early childhood education is the single best investment we can make for our children. Unfortunately, the U.S. House proposed a spending bill for the remainder of 2011 calling for drastic cuts to education, including a 22.4% reduction in funding for Head Start and Early Head Start.
Some American children are facing circumstances so dire that they require foreign aid to supplement services such as tutoring and reading programs, said a report by the Children's Defense Fund released Tuesday.
The number of Americans fighting off hunger stayed level last year, though food insecurity rates remain the highest they have been since the federal government began keeping track 15 years ago, a Department of Agriculture report released Monday found.
At the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we consider ourselves to be impatient optimists -- we are impatient with the way the world is, but optimistic that changing it is possible.
Melinda Gates suggests non-profits take a cue from companies whose global network of marketers offer widespread access.
President Barack Obama on Wednesday announced the creation of a comprehensive administration initiative devoted to spurring development efforts around the globe.
President Barack Obama will address the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday as world leaders continue to lay down their achievements and goals in the effort to decrease world poverty.
American hiker Sarah Shourd spent more than a year in Iranian prison and says she is only one-third free.
Attending a United Nations session on alleviating world poverty Tuesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed capitalism for the world's woes.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is among the world leaders scheduled to speak Tuesday at a United Nations summit on global goals to fight poverty, hunger and disease.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon exhorted member nations Monday not to waver from efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals they set for themselves a decade ago with a deadline of 2015.
When the Census Bureau released its annual U.S. poverty report last week, the news looked grim. Poverty had risen to 14.3 percent in 2009 from 13.2 percent in 2008 -- the largest single-year increase since 1980. And there is no end in sight for those struggling to make ends meet, as unemployment has remained high throughout this year.
The nation's poverty rate jumped to 14.3% in 2009, its highest level since 1994, and the 43.6 million Americans in need is the highest number in 51 years of record-keeping, the government said Thursday.
In Rwanda, a group of twenty women are weaving their way out of poverty as part of a government run cooperative.
Many summer food programs have been slashed during the recession leaving low-income children with fewer options, a report by the Food Research and Action Center said Tuesday.
About 21 percent of children in the United States will be living below the poverty line in 2010, the highest rate in 20 years, according to a new analysis of children's well-being released Tuesday.
When I was told we were traveling to the Philippines to do a story on "Smokey Mountain", I was unaware as to just how famous this landmark actually was.
A mountain made up of 50 years of trash is home to some near Manila, Philippines. Anna Coren reports.
Countries are canceling more than $1 billion in debt that Afghanistan owes them, the Paris Club of creditor nations announced Wednesday.
A leaked document known as the "Danish text" has driven an even deeper wedge between rich and poor countries embroiled in U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen.
The poverty rate rose last year to 13.2%, the highest level since 1997, said a report released Thursday.
Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom has declared a state of national calamity because so many citizens do not have food or proper nutrition.
The G-20 meeting in London, England, on April 2 will be watched by the entire world with urgency and with a yearning for hope, vision and programmatic clarity.
Singer John Legend talks about "Mama" Mwadawa Ruziga, whose business collective makes and sells products from fruits.
Moved by a 2007 trip to Ghana, singer/songwriter John Legend joined the fight to end extreme poverty in his lifetime. And based on his experiences in poor, rural areas of Africa, he says, real change is possible.
One out of every three families living below the poverty level in India paid a bribe last year for basic public services, like admitting a family member into a hospital, according to a new report.
The percentage of underweight babies born in the U.S. has increased to its highest rate in 40 years, according to a new report that also documents a recent rise in the number of children living in poverty
The world's poorest countries could pay 40 percent more for food this year than they did last year because of rising prices, according to a United Nations report released Thursday.
A bank operating on a concept that has lifted thousands of people out of grinding poverty in the developing world has set its sights on helping the poverty-stricken in America.
Riots from Haiti to Bangladesh to Egypt over the soaring costs of basic foods have brought the issue to a boiling point and catapulted it to the forefront of the world's attention, the head of an agency focused on global development said Monday.
Naomi Klein's 2000 book "No Logo" galvanized a generation to resist the lure of brands and corporatization.
The nation's poverty rate dropped last year, the first significant decline since President Bush took office
Household income crept higher and the poverty rate edged lower last year, the government said Tuesday, while the number of Americans without health insurance rose by 2.2 million to 47 million people.
One dollar. It's the cost of a New York Times, less than half a cup of coffee at Starbucks. These days it's a paltry sum. Even less when you consider that right now, a billion people are struggling to survive on less than one dollar a day. This is what defines "extreme poverty."
World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz issued this statement Thursday:
Along a dirt road in Bangladesh's green, fertile heartland, 140 miles northwest of Dhaka, workers in flip-flops are hauling bricks, pouring cement and hammering boards. The object of their labor: a...
Forget billion-dollar development projects. When Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus surveyed a poor village in the mid-1970s and found that all the money borrowed totaled just $27, he set out to ...
It all started with $50. In 1988, that's what it took Noni Bala Ghosh to revive her family's business of making sweets to sell in Kholshi, her tiny village in Bangladesh.
As part of an upcoming "CNN Presents" on poverty, CNN.com asked its readers to imagine they had $10 million dollars to give away to help end poverty.
Kids who try to get high by sniffing glue, lighter fluid and other chemicals are more likely to be white and come from families that make more than double the poverty level, according to a federal study.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Roughly 12.5 percent of the U.S. population is living in poverty, according to data released recently from the Census Bureau.
Shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Carmen Kelley was worried.
The World Bank board is expected to approve Paul Wolfowitz as its leader one day after the deputy defense secretary received the support of the European Union.
The European Commission says it is satisfied with commitments made by Paul Wolfowitz during talks in Brussels, and Germany said it expected EU states to back him as president of the World Bank.
Though the epicenter of last week's disaster was in the Indian Ocean, the devastating toll was felt worldwide.
Poverty and hunger are problems that many Americans relegate to the Third World. But the steady growth of poverty has left millions of American families afraid they won't have enough money to put food on the table.
Being poor doesn't mean being jobless, said a recent Challenger, Gray & Christmas report that found more and more working families are living at or below the poverty line.
A new UNICEF report finds that millions of children in Eastern Europe and Central Asia still live in poverty, despite economic progress being made in the region.
CNNMoney: Poverty spreadsupdated: Thu Aug 26 2004 10:46:00
The number of Americans living in poverty jumped to 35.9 million last year, up by 1.3 million, while the number of those without health care insurance rose to 45 million from 43.6 million in 2002, the U.S. government said in a report Thursday.
Paul Tebo is no one's idea of a revolutionary. A mild-mannered, gray-haired, 59-year-old chemical engineer, he has worked at DuPont for 35 years. He used to run the firm's $3-billion-a-year petroch...
Call it the Murphy's Law of Economics: If you want to produce less of something--smoking, say, or coal mining--tax it. For a glimpse of the downside of this quick and easy way to influence economic...
The average price of a Manhattan apartment south of Harlem has hit more than $850,000--at a time when two-fifths of New York City's residents make $20,000 or less a year. In Silicon Valley teachers...
Amazing fact: Even as you read this--even as each new stanza of that bizarre epic, the Clintoniad, is written--there are politicians in Washington actually trying to change, you know, laws. It's tr...
DO YOU BELIEVE in luck? Let David Wittig, the former co-head of investment banking at Kidder Peabody, tell you why you should. One evening in 1986, Wittig says, he was having dinner at the Manhatta...
If we have learned anything from the 30 years of frustration since we declared war on poverty, it should be this: You can't fix the problem if you don't understand it. Strategies founded on oversim...
The battles raging in Washington since Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House have been epic in their ferocity. But what is the war really about?
ROUTE 16 through Neshoba County, Mississippi, is a drab stretch of highway lined by scraggly cotton fields, red clay, and pine trees. Whizzing along it, you see neither signs of wealth nor any busi...
THE STATISTICAL gamesmanship over American income trends started early in this election year and has been heating up ever since. Enshrined in Bill Clinton's economic plan is the ''fact'' that the t...
IF THE WELL-BEING of its children is the proper measure of the health of a civilization, the United States is in grave danger. Of the 65 million Americans under 18, fully 20% live in poverty, 22% l...
I KNOW BY THE WORRY in their eyes that my children are not kidding when they ask, every couple of months or so, ''Are you and Mommy getting a divorce?'' And this in a close-knit family committed to...
IT IS ONE OF THE MOST crucial issues facing U.S. society. But hardly a politician will even talk about the subject, much less propose remedies for it. The problem? Simply put, America is spending t...
IT IS OF NO SMALL significance that poverty is suddenly returning to the forefront of the American consciousness. Perhaps it is mostly a comment on the immense power of our media-age Presidents to ...
NO NOVELIST would dare put into a book the most extreme of the dizzying contrasts of wealth and poverty that make up the ordinary texture of life in today's American cities. The details are too out...
LISTEN: % ''He made me scared, so I pulled the trigger. So feel sorry? I doubt it. I didn't want to see him go down like that, but better him than me.'' ''I'm gonna work 40 hours a week and bring h...
''Hey, what's everybody lining up for?'' asks the dapper young New Yorker, stepping out of a taxi. It is 10 P.M. on a Monday night, and across the street from Grand Central, Manhattan's Beaux Arts ...
TWENTY-TWO years after the opening shot in the War on Poverty, most Americans have given up hope of victory. According to a recent opinion poll, the overwhelming majority of Americans believe that ...
Hunger in affluent America in the 1980s? ''Not proved,'' we hear from official Washington. Stories of families going hungry are said to be exaggerated, and telecasts from soup kitchens are dismisse...
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